New Twitch Policy is Bad News for Partially Nude Streamers

• Twitch updates its policy on nudity and attire to make rules easier for streamers to follow.
• Streamers and users have criticised the site for its inconsistency and have said that the rules are too difficult to understand.
• However, Twitch has left room for its policy to be abused.

In a post on the Twitch blog, the streaming site has revealed major changes to its Nudity and Attire policy. Twitch says that it has heard the criticisms that its policy hasn’t been “clear enough about what is and is not allowed on stream” and that it wants to be “more transparent and consistent about our expectations”.

Twitch May Ban Streamers for Being Partially Nude

The new Twitch rules aren’t a blanket policy about nudity like the old rules. Twitch doesn’t allow streamers to be fully or partially nude, streamers can’t show their genitals or buttocks, and streamers who present as women can’t show their nipples. The new rules also ban streamers for showing their “underbust”.

The rules also completely describe the areas of the body that streamers can show during streamers and some places where showing more body is allowed. Swimming clothes, body art, and breastfeeding are just some of the places where streamers will be able to show more of themselves.

The new rules will likely hurt creators such as Amouranth, who has hundreds of thousands of followers largely because of her sex appeal. While issues such as Amouranth’s accidental, NSFW wardrobe mistake weren’t on purpose, the streamer has caused controversy by wearing a French maid’s outfit to a store to purposefully cause discomfort and to titillate her viewers. Under Twitch’s new rules, which allow cleavage but ask that anything below the hips is covered, Amouranth would most likely be given a ban.

Twitch May Ban Streamers for Some Kinds of Clothing

The new policy may also have affected streamers like Corinna Kopf who moved from Twitch to Mixer last year after being banned from the site. The streamer’s ban, which was removed, was because of a sheer top that she was wearing. Many fans asked for Twitch to remove the ban because it banned her for wearing underwear, which was really a shirt, but with the new rules that ban may have stuck.

The change to the rules should help Twitch make bans without being criticized but it has given itself some room. There may be nudity in “embedded media, studio and other Twitch-endorsed content” so viewers may just see some from official Twitch accounts.